Guess what? My grandmother was just telling me that she has a ton of letters written by my great-grandma Ruby. Apparently she was quite the news reporter. As Grandma was describing her, it struck me that Grandma Ruby would have been a blogger, just like me. Lol.

But on to the topic at hand. I just discovered Ana Salvador, a Portuguese-born artist living in the Netherlands. Her fantasy sculptures combine several of my favorite elements: beautiful, expressive faces and poses, delicate costuming, and elegant fairy wings. Her polymer clay figures are so smooth, they look larger than their diminutive 8-12 inches, and her color choices are superb.

As if that weren’t enough, though, her website, Dragonfly Works, features a second category, called “Original Dolls.” The distinction seems to be that her “dolls” are fully poseable ball-jointed beauties. These sculptures have big-eyed faces that seem to be influenced by Asian ball-jointed dolls, although she lists influences as varied as Art Nouveau and Tim Burton in her “about me” page. I really love these costumes, with their artful use of lace and other textures, and again the beautiful color schemes.

Salvador’s work is available on eBay, and you can visit her on The Fairy Network, (which you should definitely visit if you’re interested in fantasy art or fairies), as well as her own site. If you like her work and the work of other Dutch and Belgian artists, you can now buy a book full of high-quality pictures of their work for much less than it would cost to buy an actual doll.

EDIT: Ana Salvador was kind enough to e-mail me and point out that of her “art doll” figures, only Lana (who isn’t pictured here) is actually ball-jointed. The other “art dolls” are slightly poseable but not ball-jointed.